Sometime last week FBC broke 1 Million page-views according to the site-meter. Robert started the site in March 2007 so it took FBC about 28 months to reach this number.

We also broke 350 reviews with #350 coming from our newest contributor Mihir Wanchoo and we hope to reach 400 reviews in September.

Interviews are less predictable but we hope to reach 65 by the end of the year and of course we hope to keep up with the monthly spotlights and maybe offer a 2010 preview too as Robert offered the 2009 preview last fall.

We are truly grateful that our love of books expressed here resonates with so many readers!

Note: Since there was some discussion on the topic recently, we want to emphasize that all the links we offer (Amazon, BookDepository, publishers...) are done as a courtesy and for the benefit of the readers ONLY and FBC and its contributors do not derive any financial benefit out of them, so for example ordering a book through any of our links does not lead to any financial compensation for us, we are NOT Amazon affiliates... We do not do ads and any banners or book widgets we offer are again at our discretion and for the purposes of showcasing the books we love.

While we receive review copies, many of the books reviewed are bought or otherwise obtained independently (library, friends...) by the contributors - (Liviu's note: ~45% in my case from the records I keep, with an extra ~10% received from the authors directly, and only ~45% publisher review copies) - and we generally request a book for review because we think we would love it, rather than review a book because someone sent it to us.

FBC is a site whose motto could be "Here we love books!!" and while we do negative or so-so reviews, even the occasional "un-reviews", our goal first and foremost is to showcase books someone here loves and luckily there are quite a few such and from quite a wide spectrum genre and style-wise to have lots of original content.

On a final note a very special thank you to Becca for creating our lovely Thank you picture. :)

I can only find data on 2009 for unique visitors so maybe Liviu can find that out.

I personally don't feel comfortable with a charity fund. I don't want people to feel they have to pay to read. I do this reviewing for fun and never expected to get paid for it and while I can only speak for myself, I believe the others feel the same way.

Congratulations!! I must admit, it is because of this blog, which I discovered through posting on sffworld (thereby coming across Liviu), that has helped encourage and spur me to start my own. Granted my own is for entirely different reasons, but I love this blog and have followed it religiously since I first found it. Keep up the great work.

It was just fortuitous that the 1M page-view happened around July 4 so we thought that a celebratory post is appropriate.

I see nothing wrong in itself with ads or supporting links but as with other things that we do or do not do here, it is something that does not fit our needs/interests as well as not really adding value or being useful.

However, recently there was all this overblown chatter about FTC, bloggers and all so we felt having our position on the record is useful, but we do not want the note to be seen as judgmental of others since that is not its intent.